Joseph Duarte of the HOUSTON CHRONICLE today profiled Willie Lyles, the Houston-based recruiting service operator at the center of an NCAA investigation into the recruiting practices of the Oregon football program.

From Duarte’s July 8, 2011, piece in the Chronicle:

Lyles said he had informal conversations with other schools, among them the University of Houston and Rice, about purchasing his service. He occasionally contacted UH to recommend players “that they should look at” in an effort to build a relationship, but the school decided not to purchase his recruiting package.

The University of Houston football program may have not purchased a recruiting package from Complete Scouting Services, the company Lyles set up in late 2009 with Oregon football coach Chip Kelly’s blessing, but UH is documented to have made a $10,000 payment to a recruiting services company which employed Lyles at the time of the financial transaction.

In a Yahoo Sports report on July 1, 2011, Charles Robinson and Dan Wetzel reported how Lyles first met Kelly:

On Nov. 28, 2007, former University of Houston football coach Art Briles left the school to take over as the head football coach at Baylor.

The 2008 Baylor football recruiting class included star quarterback Robert Griffin III, who had previously committed to Houston, and former Texas high school prospect Kendall Wright, who this week was named to the 2011 preseason watch list for the Biletnikoff Award.

Like the Briles-coached UH Cougars, LSU also reportedly paid MSL Combines $10,000 in 2007. Former Texas A&M assistant coach Van Malone recently alleged that Lyles asked him for $80,000 in 2007 in exchange for delivering high profile recruit Patrick Peterson to the Aggies.

Peterson ultimately sign with LSU.

In 2007, Lyles was a MSL colleague of current Florida-based recruiting service operator Charles Fishbein.

In 2008, Fishbein started Elite Scouting Services (ESS). Of that transition, Fishbein told reporter Justin Hopkins of Oregon.247sports.com three days ago: Read more…

While anyone can understand players celebrating a victory over the Jayhawk football team into the wee morning hours, Jefferson and Gordon made a grave mistake in attempting to get their grub on at 2:15am on Sunday morning at the local Taco Bell drive-thru.

Police report that while he was waiting for his food in the drive-thru lane at the restaurant, Jefferson fell asleep in the driver’s seat of a car. Then the fun began: Read more…

Jeff Goodman of FOXSports.com reports that yesterday Baylor basketball star LaceDarius Dunn turned himself into Waco authorities after being charged with felony aggravated assault for allegedly punching his girlfriend, Lacharlesia Edwards, in the face and breaking her jaw.

The student BAYLOR LARIAT has details on the altercation from the arrest affidavit, which included emergency surgery for Edwards:

On Sept. 27 officers were called to Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center to investigate an assault. A woman was suffering from a broken jaw, according to a public information release from Waco police.

Emergency corrective surgery was completed to fix the victim’s jaw. An eight-hole plate with eight screws was used to repair the left side fracture and a six-hole plate with six screws was used to repair the right side fracture.

According to the police report, she told officers that she and Dunn had gotten into an argument when Dunn allegedly punched her in the face.

Despite the report from Waco police, the alleged victim’s father Charles Edwards told Goodman that the incident was one, big misunderstanding and that Dunn had “accidentally” broken his daughter’s jaw.

“She said it was an accident,” Charles Edwards told FOXSports.com. “She said she sneaked up on him in the dark and he hit her by mistake. It wasn’t a fight at all.”

Today, alleged victim Edwards, who has a three-year-old child with Dunn, released a statement claiming she was never struck by Dunn, accident or otherwise, and did not have a broken jaw - as reported in the police affidavit: Read more…

CU does not have an invitation from any other conference. Meeting is over. Smoke but no fire here. No pending announcements. Basically administrators got advice from their lawyers about different scenarios.

Could one of those scenarios be a lawsuit of some sort if CU is left out of a possible exodus to the Pac-10 by six Big 12 schools?

The University of Colorado’s Board of Regents will meet behind closed doors tonight to receive legal advice about the Boulder campus’ possible switch from the Big 12 conference to the Pac-10, sources told the Camera.

The university doesn’t anticipate any formal action to result from the discussion about a possible league switch for the Boulder campus’ NCAA teams.

There will be no public participation and the meeting will take place behind closed doors.

Regents are holding the “special” meeting tonight at 5 p.m. in executive session to “discuss a specific legal matter.” The board is meeting at 1800 Grant St. in Denver.

Recognizing the defection of Nebraska to the Big 10 could create a mass exodus of Big 12 schools to the Pac-10, Kansas chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little called Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman today to “urge” her counterpart to keep the school in the Big 12.

Gray-Little said she planned to call Missouri chancellor Brady J. Deaton “with the same message.”

The site originating that report, Yahoo’s Orangebloods.com, has since added that Nebraska has been given an ultimatum by the Big 12 to state its intentions in the next two weeks. If the Cornhuskers remain on the fence or pledge allegiance to the Big Ten, six Big 12 schools will reportedly move to the Pac-10.

Missouri has also been given a similar deadline, but MU moving to the Big Ten is now reportedly a foregone conclusion. Nebraska though appears to be the trigger that could set the demise of the Big 12 in motion if it also defects to the Big Ten.

In the wake of that originating report, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany acknowledged today that the timetable of his league’s expansion is likely to be affected by the Big 12’s new deadline for Nebraska and Missouri.

The Pac-10 concluded its meetings Sunday by giving commissioner Larry Scott the authority to pursue any possible expansion, while not committing the conference to adding any more schools.

In the preceding months, Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne has alternately professed his openness to joining the Big Ten while also playing coy about the prospect. Most recently, he’s been mum on the subject but today it was revealed that after Osborne met with Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel in late April, he sent an email to Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman that read, “I think it would be a good time if we met sometime soon regarding the expansion landscape.”

So why is Nebraska so important to the future of the Big 12? Read more…

I love Bob Huggins and his breast pocket mini bottles being in the Final Four, and Butler is a great story, especially in Indy. But if I could pick one game to attend this weekend at gunpoint it’s Brittney Griner vs. The Streak in San Antone on Sunday.

The sports media finally has a legitimately compelling women’s basketball matchup, but somehow the Sunday game isn’t getting more than the normal, politically-correct deference the women’s Final Four always receives. At least so far.

As I’ve written on more than one occasion here, Griner has a chance to be the Gretzky of not just women’s basketball, but the most dominant female athlete in the history of women’s team sports. Her dominant physical skills are like nothing we’ve ever seen from a team sport female.

Baylor women’s basketball player Brittney Griner previously made headlines for her tall 6′ 8″ frame and her ability to dunk. Now she’s making headlines again, but for the wrong reasons.

Griner was ejected from last night’s game against Texas Tech after throwing a punch at an opponent. Griner became tangled up with the Red Raiders’ Jordan Barncastle under the net, when Barncastle grabbed Griner by the arm and roughly spun her away. Brittney responded by delivering a fist to Jordan’s jaw.

I haven’t confirmed that Tuberville has been hired, but wouldn’t doubt it. In fact, I predicted Tuberville would be hired a week ago.

Tuberville would Mike Leach, who was fired by Tech after a complaint from the son of ESPN’s Craig James, Tech wide receiver Adam James.

Earlier this week I reported that Tech would hire Art Briles for the job, and sources told me at the time that Briles had been offered the job. After Tech offered Briles, Baylor donors ponied up an extension that included a second raise in less than a week for Briles. Briles now has a seven-year deal with Baylor.